Sheer Exhaustion
by kryss-delrhei
Summary: COMPLETE. SeymourTidus. One-Shot. In the end, a puppet will return to his maester. Sequel to 'Sheer Ignorance'.


**Disclaimer:** I do not own Final Fantasy X nor the characters, just borrowing them from Square-Enix for a little while.

**Title:** Sheer Exhaustion  
**Author:** Kryss Del'Rhei  
**Fandom:** Final Fantasy X  
**Pairing:** Seymour/Tidus  
**Rating:** T  
**Summary:** In the end, a puppet will return to his maester.

**Author's Note:** Finally finished with the Sheer Series. It took forever to do, considering since my muse decided to kick the bucket the whole time, but it's done.

* * *

Yuna is crying and I can't find enough emotion left inside of me to reciprocate. I just stand there, quiet, looking out over the sea of stars as Yuna's aeons danced through the sky, before they exploded into fading pyreflies.

It was finally over, Sin had been defeated, my father had been laid to rest, and Seymour Guado had been stopped for good this time. Now, the people of Spira could move on with their lives and surge past the spiral of death that Seymour had wanted to encase Spira in.

And yet I knew, this was not a fate that I would share. The simple, relaxing and enjoying a life where you didn't have to constantly run in fear.

The hair on my arms stood up on end as my skin tingled to the core.

I was fading away.

Maester Mika's voice echoed in my head, and I wondered if we had not defeated Lady Yunalesca and let Seymour rampage through Spira tearing it apart at the seams, would I had been given the chance to stay here. But I wouldn't had been happy. I wouldn't have at home.

I swallowed past a thick lump in my throat, a shocking tingle running up my spine, and all I could imagine was a set of razor sharp claws brushing down my back.

Rikku gasped, her breath catching in her throat brought me back to reality. I felt it ripple through my body, before I heard the others react. I had yet to tell them that I wasn't even a real person. Just a dream of a reality that was no longer.

Again, another mistake I had made.

And yet, even if I wasn't real, then why did I feel like all that I had gone through, all the feelings of hurt I'd anguished over these last few months was real enough to me?

Seymour.

Even the feelings that I had cooked up and come to believe, was that all a sham against me? Just the thought of the Maester, had my stomach in knots or was it the fact that my skin on the top of my hand shimmered and a saw through it.

I just some pale shade of someone else, living in a world that wasn't even mine. And my father had come to this conclusion, even died knowing it, and yet… he had been happy.

"I have to go," I hear myself saying the words, feeling the weight they put on the air.

Yuna released a cracked sob, "No!"

I shrugged and gave her my best smile, though we all knew it was only a front.

It was my time to leave.

Just as it had been Auron's.

Just as it had been my father's.

_You belong to me._

Just as it had been Seymour's.

Pyreflies danced through the air, fluttering around me, curling and weaving through my shimmering translucent body. I was ready, as ready as I would ever be.

I took a running start, Wakka screaming after me. Launching off the airship deck, and I was awash in clouds.

_Always the puppet dancing on my strings_, the voice resonated in my head as the fall carried me through the clouds, the pyreflies dancing erratically around me, the trill of the noises filling my ears. I open my arms wide, closed my eyes.

The last of Sin exploded in the sky and million more pyreflies joined the swarm around me as I descended.

I could feel my body tearing away from me, and all I could do was welcome it and the vision behind my eyelids of a tall Maester staring so sinisterly down his elegant nose at me. I was so unsure about when I had become so exhausted with all the fighting the disgust with myself.

_I told you I had plans for you_, and I smile, knowing that I had been a fool.

Seymour was waiting on the other side. The pyreflies were guiding me.

A flicker and pull, and the fall was no longer a fall, my feet coming into contact with something substantial.

I could breath again, it was then I realized I had been holding my breath.

"So good of you to join me," the voice was just as I had remembered it being, the darkness that it had held hidden barely at bay still very much present.

I open my eyes, and he is there, looking at me.

And I know in that moment, that even if I wasn't a reality, here in the Farplane, I was whatever I wanted to be.

"Sorry to have kept you waiting," I say.

And he stares down at me, gives me the briefest of smiles.

He's changed.

Maybe this could be the Maester that I had fallen in love with. He meets me halfway, the flowers brushing against my legs, Seymour towering over me, his cerulean irises staring intently at me. He raises his hand to caress my cheek, prickling my skin along my neck with the tips of his claws.

This time when he kisses me, it's not in the imitation of a lover, there is meaning, there is apology, there is so much in the movement of his lips against mine that my head is swarming with all the thoughts.

Again I can't breath, but for a different reason.

He pulls back and I inhale sharply, "You didn't wait long did you?" I ask tentatively.

Seymour chuckles, "Yes."

I smile, and for the first time in so many months, it's a true smile.

A perfect end to a not-so-perfect story, as Auron would say.


End file.
